The Lady in the Flannel

-1-

The girl in the jeans and flannel

Sips coffee in San Francisco

Her husband snapping photos

The pier raging in the background

She holds the perfect smile

Like her modeling in New York City

Living out the daydream

Of a long forgotten lifetime

A teenager from Kansas City

A divorced father and a mother

And a lover we call her husband

With children coming after down the road.

(Chorus)

And I see her in the flannel

I see her when exhausted

I see the wavelength frequency

The crystalline of her posture

And I wonder when she breaks free

Waves slipping softly by her

And I wonder when she breaks free

Her arms flapping faster

Toward the shore.

-2-

A few years from San Francisco

The lady in the flannel

Loses her brave husband

To divorce and banal weather

She looks upon the relics

The vacations and the photos

Sees the perfect fourness

Of her family shaped together

Once posing in San Antonio

The piers and harbors fading

With the need for another camera

To tap into the loving

To delete the trips of anger

The fights against her lover

With no winner or an answer

Only pages to be turned and turned and turned.

(Chorus)

And I see her in the flannel

I see her when exhausted

I see the wavelength frequency

The crystalline of her posture

And I wonder when she breaks free

Waves slipping softly by her

And I wonder when she breaks free

Her arms flapping faster

Toward the shore.

-3-

But the girl in the jeans and flannel

Looks deeply into the mirror

Sees the gray hairs covered

With golden shapely color

The lines beneath her eyelids

Hide her behind the shadows

Of makeup placed near edges

As darkness rages inside her

Her body once the cover

Of the magazine and the party

She once walked into the room

Men turning their heads behind her

But the control of former glories

Slips into stories of her memory

So she sinks into the mirror

And loses something larger

Thirty-four years have passed her

And what can she show us

As she applies her rosy lipstick

And sprays perfume into the solid air.

(Chorus)

And I see her in the flannel

I see her when exhausted

I see the wavelength frequency

The crystalline of her posture

And I wonder when she breaks free

The waves slipping softly by her

And I wonder when she breaks free

Before she sees the shore.

-4-

Let's look into the future

The honor of the mother—

The lady in the flannel—

With her children smiling at her

She snaps the photo twice

At her two sons' graduation

She gets the perfect postures

The smiles and silly answers

But the long, forbidden questions

The truth of a single mother

Lining up her life's directions

But remembering within her belly

The beginning of life's addresses

Her children crawling on the carpet

Blowing their first bubbles

And laughing at their mother's happy voice.

(Chorus)

And the lady in the flannel

The lady once exhausted

They know her wavelength frequency

And her crystalline posture

They see her in the ocean

Waves slipping softly by her

They know that she is free

Her arms flapping faster

Toward the shore.

And they sit beside the beaches

And they listen to her stories

And they throw their arms around her

The flannel and the glory

All smiling, smiling, smiling

On the canvas shore.

--Moon